In a world driven and defined by immorality, the truth is often obscured by propaganda. The boundaries between natural and artificial are blurred. The conscious becomes the unconscious.
To challenge the rationale is bold.
To explore the minefield is brave.
To unearth the truth - nothing better.
Ne ultra - nothing beyond.

Saturday, 29 November 2008

How does one measure evil? Is there such a thing as a universal 'index' according to which deeds of evil can be judged?

If we, for example, take the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as the final arbiter of what is evil and what is not, how could we then judge Zimbabwe as being more evil than, for example, China and Saudi Arabia – two countries enjoying marvelous ties with the West despite their abysmal human rights records. Is this blatant hypocrisy, or just the obligatory Real Politic of individual nations surviving in a cynical world where might (financial, military, etc) is right?

Be that as it may; it would be quite an interesting exercise to give Joe and Jane Average a list of five words to rank according to the evilness 'index' of the West.

For example; take the words Apartheid, Gowon, Mengisthu, Hutu, and Kim IL Sung, and then give them a number, 1 – 5, on a scale of the evil they signify. Try it.

It would not be surprising if your ranking closely resembles the original order of the words I listed. The last four words will most probably be vaguely familiar and have some negative connotations, whereas the first word, Apartheid, is guaranteed to conjure up images of the most evil kind. The question now obviously is whether evil is evil most foul simply because you know about it, especially in view of the fact that the above four words that you are not really familiar with denote genocides of a million and more.

Did you know that fewer than 2000 people were deliberately killed by security forces in South Africa during the 42 years of Apartheid?

And did you know that 90% of all the politically motivated deaths during Apartheid (total 20 000) was due to Black-on-Black (mostly tribal) violence?

20 000 too many of course, but seen against the background of the never-ending vilification of white South Africans, the four million-man genocides mentioned above and innumerable unknown other evils like, for example, Robert Mugabe's Knighthood, awarded by the Queen while he was massacring 21 000 Ndebeles in 1984, surely must illustrate that selective (media-borne) knowledge of evil can never be the ultimate criteria when putting together an 'index' of universal evil.

Lest I stand accused of quantifying evil, let us examine the reason why Apartheid's 2000 dead in 42 years is judged as being more evil than, amongst others, Pol Pot's 2 million dead in 4 years and Rwanda's 1 million dead in 3 months.

Apartheid South Africa was ruled by whites, and whites (the West) demand that their kin, wherever they may find themselves on this lonely planet, act according to the moral standards they have set themselves, be it those inherent in human rights, democracy or capitalism. Whenever a white nation transgresses, it is punished till it conforms….and rightly so. Noble and honourable indeed the West's moral hegemony is, especially given the fact that none of the other races bother to do so at all. Japan can't be bothered (except financially) by China's human rights abuses, neither can black South Africa by Mugabe's horror regime, or Saudi Arabia by the Taliban's madness.

Different moral strokes for different coloured folks, it would seem. But then, the West has always been on a mission…..to make existence as livable as possible, for all humanity. A quest not easily undertaken or brought to fruition, especially when living in the moral outskirts of progressive human existence. ..like in Africa.

Did you know that the life expectancy of black South Africans nearly equalled that of Europeans during the last decade of Apartheid?

Did you know that the black population nearly trebled during Apartheid?

Did you know that black South Africans had the highest per capita income and education levels in Africa during Apartheid?

No, of course you didn't….because your view of evil has already been defined.

Imagine being on a mission…to rid your surrounding world of primitive ignorance, and then you stumble across the last hurdle (the final acknowledgement of universal human rights, democracy, etc) – not because you wanted to….but because your fellow runners simply refuse to acknowledge its existence.

And the probable reply from El Presidente will be, "I don't care". For foreigners reading this, understand the severity of the problem when CHILDREN ask for the death penalty to be re-instated.

Pretoria - About 2 400 children gathered on a rugby field in Suiderberg on Tuesday to honour all South Africans who had lost their lives because of crime.

The children from Booysens Primary, Saamspan Primary and Suiderberg High carried white wooden crosses in the hope that the government would hear their plea for safety.

In about 2 000 letters to President Kgalema Motlanthe, the children asked him to address the crime problem, because they were scared of going to bed at night.

Children want death penalty back "About 90% of the children are asking in these letters for the reinstatement of the death penalty," said Kobus Hermitage, organiser and chairperson of the South Africa Against Crime action group.

"Something must be done urgently about crime in our country. Our children are too scared to leave their homes."

Tanya Engelbrecht, 16, and Lavonne Benade, 16, pupils at Pretoria Tuine Technical High School, accused the government in their speeches of not being able to bring crime under control.

"We don't even have a police force we can trust, because they're getting away with murder," Tanya said.

Thursday, 27 November 2008

Just a note here to point out that the financial meltdown we are experiencing now can be placed fairly and squarely at the feet of the politically correct Democratic Party in the USA. You don't believe me? Read about it here or watch a video on YouTube here .

If you agree with what you read here, please help by linking to this site whenever and wherever you can. After all (to paraphrase Edmund Burke) for political correctness to triumph it only requires that common sense does nothing!

Have you ever stopped to wonder why 40% of people don't bother to vote anymore? Have you ever stopped to wonder why, which ever party is in power, nothing ever gets any better? Have you ever stopped to wonder why all the three major political parties in the UK have broadly the same policies? The answer is simple - political correctness. This left wing ideology has very cleverly, and by stealth, replaced British politics. None of the main parties now dare suggest any policy that is not politically correct otherwise the PC Brigade will label them the 'nasty' party. Witness the Conservative party policy U turns. In a desperate effort to lose their 'nasty' party label they have become Blue Labour, a slightly diluted form of New Labour!

So we now have the three main parties all occupying the same small piece of 'centre ground'. Many people don't vote on the grounds that it is pointless - you will get the same whoever wins. Some people don't vote because they realise that politically correct policies are what has got us into this mess in the first place.

Other people don't vote because they realise that career politicians are a self seeking, corrupt bunch of freeloaders who they wouldn't trust to run their whelk stall while they were on holiday. Notice that I say career politicians - this is the new breed of politicians that haven't ever entered the real world of work. They have left school, gone to university and then blagged a job as a 'research assistant' to a MP before realising that the job was such a doddle that they could do it themselves. They have never had to hold down a proper job, they have no management or other skills, hold no real political views and tend to migrate to whichever party looks most likely to win power. To survive in this fantasy environment all you need to do is to be politically correct. You can read more about this, the political parties and how the New Labour ministers got there under Politicians/ Parties on the navigation bar.

So what is political correctness, how did it start and how did it become so successful? Political correctness is first and foremost an attack on free speech, clear thinking and discussion. Political correctness is perpetrated by the left in politics as a cover for their flawed ideology - a sort of cultural Marxism. By cloaking their strange ideas under the cover of not wishing to offend anyone (which naturally appeals to peoples' better nature), they try to bypass debate and give a 'received wisdom' which must not be questioned. And anyone who disagrees with this 'received wisdom' must therefore be a really nasty person and deserves to be ostracised by their peers. This peer pressure is instrumental in enforcing and expanding political correctness.

For example, if you question whether unfettered immigration into this country is necessarily a good thing or perhaps whether immigrants should be health checked, then you must be a nasty bigoted 'Little Englander'. Come on everyone - shout him down with cries of 'racist'. Of course, only the hard of thinking could be drawn into this charade - anyone with an ounce of common sense can see right through it.

So how did it all start? Political Correctness started in a think tank (called The Frankfurt School) in Germany in 1923. The purpose was to find a solution to the biggest problem facing the implementers of communism in Russia. Why wasn't the wonderful idea of communism spreading? Read the full history and purpose here or watch a 22 minute documentary here.

The Frankfurt school recommended (amongst other things):

the creation of racism offences

continual change to create confusion

the teaching of sex and homosexuality to children

the undermining of schools and teachers' authority

huge immigration to destroy national identity

the promotion of excessive drinking

emptying the churches

an unreliable legal system with bias against the victim of crime

dependency on the state or state benefits

control and dumbing down of media

encouraging the breakdown of the family

Sound all too familiar? Yes - Great Britain 1997 onwards......

The basic idea is to make the country wholly dependent on the State. By the dumbing down of education, the creation of huge state sector employment and large scale immigration, New Labour has effectively created a captive audience to vote for them or Blue Labour, should the Conservatives actually get back into power.

If the Conservatives did get back into power, nothing much would change. David Cameron has already shown his true Politically Correct credentials many times but none so shamelessly as when he sacked the well respected Patrick Mercer, just for speaking the truth. Patrick Mercer wasn't being a racist, he was just commenting on how in Army life you get picked on if you have some different feature whether it is black skin, ginger hair, being fat or just lazy. My Father did me a great service many years ago when pointed out that 'sticks & stones would break my bones but names would never hurt me'. Thanks for instilling some common sense in me, Dad!

But of course, political correctness has made common sense a thing of the past. If you catch a burglar in your house then it's probably best to help the poor soul by carrying your possessions to the front door lest he should trip up and hurt himself and it's you that end up in court!

After all, you won't get much help from the Police, who have been effectively neutralised by the fast tracking of university graduates whose only experience of life has been obtained in the liberal atmosphere of education. Probably best not to complain to them about their lack of attendance when your car has been vandalised or you will probably get a letter back from a Superintendent pointing out that vandals are victims as well (read it here). And just in case any real policemen still exist, the Politically Correct Brigade has turned the Police Force in on itself by claims of institutional racism.

If they do actually succeed in getting a villain into court (only 1 for every 100 crimes committed) then the Magistrates hand out such lenient sentences (as laid down by the very Politically Correct 'sentencing advisory panel') that there is no deterrent. If you do end up in prison (extremely unlikely as New Labour have deliberately refused to build anything like enough new places) the prison officers are told to call you by your first name and not say anything that may upset you! As your cell is now your home, you are allowed to smoke there but Prison Officers who want to search it for drugs now have to give you 30 mins notice of their visit so that they don't put themselves at risk from the smoke oh and also to give you enough time to move your drugs elsewhere. Just in case you do get bored, you can keep yourself amused by repeatedly taking the prison governor to court over trivial matters that you think violate your human rights (no pornography etc) - all paid for by legal aid!

Travelers can descend upon your area, dump old cars and shit everywhere with impunity. You try doing it in your front garden and see what happens! They are allowed to bypass the normal planning controls that are so strictly enforced on the rest of us and cost local councils hundreds of thousands of pounds in court cases and clean-ups. Who pays? Why you do of course - just check your council tax bill!

Illegal immigrants (if caught) are rarely deported. Those that are deported are just the more honest ones who don't know how to play the system or haven't been coached by the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns which is funded by your lottery money! Oh and have you got a long way to come to get here? Why not hijack an airliner for the trip? Don't worry, we will still let you stay!

Would you like a black coffee? NO! You can't say that! It's coffee without milk and Local Authorities spend a fortune of our money on making their employees attend courses on Newspeak!

Our British humour has suffered badly. We can't tell jokes anymore in case it's considered racist or it upsets anyone. Don't these Politically Correct people realise that the clue is in the word "joke",which my dictionary quite rightly defines as "something said in fun or jest" or "to say something in fun or teasing rather than in earnest?"

Try organising an event or trip and you find yourself tied up in the endless red tape created by the Health & Safety Executive. These people are all part of the 'Nanny State' (state control) which insists in sticking its nose into every aspect of our lives and telling us how to live it!

Just in case there is anyone left in the country that might still be enjoying themselves - let's ban smoking, fox hunting and let feminists launch a totally unfounded attack on men as rapists.

That is the sad state of the UK today. But overwhelmed by their own success with political correctness, the left have something else just as sinister up their sleeve so they can expand their power and control over us even more - the Great Global Warming scam! Same methodology - an idea to appeal to peoples' better nature - let's save the planet - and the same way of enforcing it by peer pressure. Just watch what happens to any scientist who breaks ranks or disagrees - they get the same treatment that Galileo got from the medieval church. David Bellamy was the first I think. It takes a brave man (or a self sufficient one) to come out against these things publicly when you know your future livelihood may be at risk.

Politically correct people can't stand reality or see that things have evolved to be as they are for good reasons. Politically correct people remind me of ostriches - they bury their heads in the sand and then proceed to talk out of the only orifice that still remains above ground.

So don't let anyone fool you that political correctness is just about being "nice to people", tolerant and treating them with proper respect. That's called good manners. Political correctness has been deliberately designed to subvert free speech, debate and common sense, replacing these with a ruthlessly enforced set of left wing ideas. Far from being tolerant, politically correct people are the most intolerant of all people and have the worst manners. They refuse to debate subjects (as their views don't stand up to the most elementary scrutiny), preferring just to scream abuse at you.

To read more about how political correctness has replaced British politics and how it affects specific subjects, just select them on the sidebar. In case you get too depressed doing so, I have included some lighter reading as well.

This site will highlight absurd incidents of political correctness wherever they may occur. If you see some insane occurrence of Political Correctness or agree / disagree with anything you read on here then please send me an email info@politicallyincorrect.me.uk - but I reserve the right to publish them.

According to Stan Liebowitz, the Ashbel Smith professor of Economics in the Business School at the University of Texas at Dallas, the sub-prime mortgage crisis was caused by political correctness.

Do-gooders complained that banks discriminated against minorities and the poor when granting mortgages. They persuaded Congress to amended the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act so that data could be collected to prove this. A subsequent study of this data was used to prove discrimination so that bank regulators required banks to lend money to these groups. The Democratic Party, led at the time by President Bill Clinton threatened to prosecute banks who didn't comply with the regulators demands.

It seems to have escaped the attention of these regulators that the real reason loans were turned down was the fact that the financial standing of the applicants didn't stand up to scrutiny. Or if it did then they seemed to have not wanted to incur the wrath of the PC Brigade by sticking to commonsense.

Now that these poor people are having their houses repossessed and being made homeless, predictably the PC Brigade are blaming everyone but themselves. When will these mindless do-gooders realise that things are as they are in the world for a very good reason and stop meddling!!

So that you can make up your own mind, I have reproduced his article below and below that, a New York Times article in 1999.

Perhaps the greatest scandal of the mortgage crisis is that it is a direct result of an intentional loosening of underwriting standards - done in the name of ending discrimination, despite warnings that it could lead to wide-scale defaults. At the crisis' core are loans that were made with virtually nonexistent underwriting standards - no verification of income or assets; little consideration of the applicant's ability to make payments; no down payment.

Most people instinctively understand that such loans are likely to be unsound. But how did the heavily-regulated banking industry end up able to engage in such foolishness? From the current hand-wringing, you'd think that the banks came up with the idea of looser underwriting standards on their own, with regulators just asleep on the job. In fact, it was the regulators who relaxed these standards - at the behest of community groups and "progressive" political forces.

In the 1980s, groups such as the activists at ACORN began pushing charges of "redlining" - claims that banks discriminated against minorities in mortgage lending. In 1989, sympathetic members of Congress got the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act amended to force banks to collect racial data on mortgage applicants; this allowed various studies to be ginned up that seemed to validate the original accusation. In fact, minority mortgage applications were rejected more frequently than other applications - but the overwhelming reason wasn't racial discrimination, but simply that minorities tend to have weaker finances. Yet a "landmark" 1992 study from the Boston Fed concluded that mortgage-lending discrimination was systemic.

That study was tremendously flawed - a colleague and I later showed that the data it had used contained thousands of egregious typos, such as loans with negative interest rates. Our study found no evidence of discrimination. Yet the political agenda triumphed - with the president of the Boston Fed saying no new studies were needed, and the US comptroller of the currency seconding the motion. No sooner had the ink dried on its discrimination study than the Boston Fed, clearly speaking for the entire Fed, produced a manual for mortgage lenders stating that: "discrimination may be observed when a lender's underwriting policies contain arbitrary or outdated criteria that effectively disqualify many urban or lower-income minority applicants."

Some of these "outdated" criteria included the size of the mortgage payment relative to income, credit history, savings history and income verification. Instead, the Boston Fed ruled that participation in a credit-counseling program should be taken as evidence of an applicant's ability to manage debt. Sound crazy? You bet. Those "outdated" standards existed to limit defaults. But bank regulators required the loosened underwriting standards, with approval by politicians and the chattering class. A 1995 strengthening of the Community Reinvestment Act required banks to find ways to provide mortgages to their poorer communities. It also let community activists intervene at yearly bank reviews, shaking the banks down for large pots of money. Banks that got poor reviews were punished; some saw their merger plans frustrated; others faced direct legal challenges by the Justice Department.

Flexible lending programs expanded even though they had higher default rates than loans with traditional standards. On the Web, you can still find CRA loans available via ACORN with "100 percent financing . . . no credit scores . . . undocumented income . . . even if you don't report it on your tax returns." Credit counseling is required, of course. Ironically, an enthusiastic Fannie Mae Foundation report singled out one paragon of nondiscriminatory lending, which worked with community activists and followed "the most flexible underwriting criteria permitted."

That lender's $1 billion commitment to low-income loans in 1992 had grown to $80 billion by 1999 and $600 billion by early 2003. Who was that virtuous lender? Why - Countrywide, the nation's largest mortgage lender, recently in the headlines as it hurtled toward bankruptcy. In an earlier newspaper story extolling the virtues of relaxed underwriting standards, Countrywide's chief executive bragged that, to approve minority applications that would otherwise be rejected "lenders have had to stretch the rules a bit." He's not bragging now.

For years, rising house prices hid the default problems since quick refinances were possible. But now that house prices have stopped rising, we can clearly see the damage caused by relaxed lending standards. This damage was quite predictable: "After the warm and fuzzy glow of 'flexible underwriting standards' has worn off, we may discover that they are nothing more than standards that lead to bad loans . . . these policies will have done a disservice to their putative beneficiaries if . . . they are dispossessed from their homes." I wrote that, with Ted Day, in a 1998 academic article. Sadly, we were spitting into the wind.

These days, everyone claims to favor strong lending standards. What about all those self-righteous newspapers, politicians and regulators who were intent on loosening lending standards? As you might expect, they are now self-righteously blaming those, such as Countrywide, who did what they were told.

Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending

By STEVEN A. HOLMES Published: September 30, 1999

In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.

The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets -- including the New York metropolitan region -- will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.

Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.

In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates -- anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans.

''Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the 1990's by reducing down payment requirements,'' said Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae's chairman and chief executive officer. ''Yet there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market.''

Demographic information on these borrowers is sketchy. But at least one study indicates that 18 percent of the loans in the subprime market went to black borrowers, compared to 5 per cent of loans in the conventional loan market.

In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's.

''From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,'' said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ''If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.''

Under Fannie Mae's pilot program, consumers who qualify can secure a mortgage with an interest rate one percentage point above that of a conventional, 30-year fixed rate mortgage of less than $240,000 -- a rate that currently averages about 7.76 per cent. If the borrower makes his or her monthly payments on time for two years, the one percentage point premium is dropped.

Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, does not lend money directly to consumers. Instead, it purchases loans that banks make on what is called the secondary market. By expanding the type of loans that it will buy, Fannie Mae is hoping to spur banks to make more loans to people with less-than-stellar credit ratings.

Fannie Mae officials stress that the new mortgages will be extended to all potential borrowers who can qualify for a mortgage. But they add that the move is intended in part to increase the number of minority and low income home owners who tend to have worse credit ratings than non-Hispanic whites.

Home ownership has, in fact, exploded among minorities during the economic boom of the 1990's. The number of mortgages extended to Hispanic applicants jumped by 87.2 per cent from 1993 to 1998, according to Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. During that same period the number of African Americans who got mortgages to buy a home increased by 71.9 per cent and the number of Asian Americans by 46.3 per cent.

In contrast, the number of non-Hispanic whites who received loans for homes increased by 31.2 per cent.

Despite these gains, home ownership rates for minorities continue to lag behind non-Hispanic whites, in part because blacks and Hispanics in particular tend to have on average worse credit ratings.

In July, the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed that by the year 2001, 50 percent of Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's portfolio be made up of loans to low and moderate-income borrowers. Last year, 44 percent of the loans Fannie Mae purchased were from these groups.

The change in policy also comes at the same time that HUD is investigating allegations of racial discrimination in the automated underwriting systems used by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to determine the credit-worthiness of credit applicants.

Wednesday, 26 November 2008

Concerns over a water crisis in South Africa have reached an all-time high, the South African Institution of Civil Engineering (SAICE) said on Wednesday.

"Recent events in South Africa indicate that the national government is very concerned about the water situation," the SAICE said in a statement.

It said it had, in conjunction with the Water Institute of Southern Africa (Wisa), presented a joint submission to the parliamentary portfolio committee on water and forestry.

The submission was intended to lend weight to the grave concerns from diverse quarters that the water situation was a national crisis of the first rank.

"SAICE and Wisa together represent most of the professional water engineers and water scientists in South Africa.

"These organisations took the unusual step of preparing a joint submission because they recognised the crucial strategic importance of water in our country," said SAICE.

The submission was presented to the committee in Cape Town on October 22 2008. In the submission, the bodies said increasing water scarcity created enormous challenges in equitably allocating it as a precious resource to competing sectors.

"Provision has to be made to sustain essential economic growth both for present and future generations," the submission read.

However, provisions also needed to be made in securing basic human needs, meeting international obligations and protecting the resource and the fragile environment that it supported. This called for integrated management and implementation of the highest order.

The bodies said the 1998 National Water Act (NWA) provided a comprehensive legislative platform for achieving these ends.

However, a number of far-reaching concerns had arisen regarding the implementation of the Act and the capacity of the organisations charged with the task. While SAICE and Wisa understood that the purpose of the portfolio committee in asking for submissions was to review the legislation to ascertain implementation, challenges and possible areas of improvement to the Act, it was in their view of "deep and urgent concerns" to focus on two aspects.

These were implementation and challenges, rather than on what would be mostly cosmetic changes to the legislation itself.

Some of the concerns raised were water quality, ageing infrastructure, capacity and skills. These issues could be exacerbated by new challenges such as climate change. -- Sapa

Two fellow contributors have mentioned this incident where a researcher was suspended for producing a report on the state of the water supply in South Africa. I thought it interesting to find out what was so offensive in the man's report that merited his suspension. Indeed, as you will see below, Dr Turton did a big booboo - he dared to tell the truth.

Dr Turton essentially states that South Africa faces a water shortage and the social ramifications of the lack of water could lead to the locals once again turning on foreigners whom they perceive as stealing their resources. As Mr Spock would say, that's a logical conclusion, Captain Kirk. But instead of raising a red flag and initiating debate, the CSIR suspends the man and seals his report.

I can recall the myriad of reports that were produced for Eskom that the authorities also chose to ignore with the resultant catastrophic consequences but unlike electricity which is not strictly a life and death issue, water is essential for survival and basically what this poor fellow was trying to convey was that we should pay attention to the handling of this vital resource. See the posts in the past that we've done listed below.

The full presentation of Dr Turton can be found here (image is actual front page of report). The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research suspended its researcher, Dr Anthony Turton due to offensive statements in his presentation, it said on Saturday.

"Certain statements that were made in the presentation, could not be sufficiently substantiated," said CSIR spokesperson Christa van der Merwe.

Turton was suspended on Friday over a presentation he was to deliver about South Africa's water crisis during the CSIR's Real and Relevant conference in Pretoria on Tuesday.

This included the depiction of burning victims in his presentation, which could have offended sensitive members of the audience.

"The CSIR encourages its researchers to publish their findings...Turton elected to engage with the media on the matter of the withdrawal of his presentation, despite internal avenues that are available, and in contravention of organisational policy," said van der Merwe.

The Saturday Star reported that the council executive of the CSIR charged Turton with insubordination and bringing the CSIR into disrepute.

He was forbidden from delivering his keynote address because it contained "unsubstantiated" facts, according to the executive, as well as photographs of this year's xenophobic attacks, which, the executive added, "may disturb people".

It was reported that in his presentation Turton was to have said that South Africa had run out of surplus water, with 98% of it already allocated.

He was also apparently to have said that because most rivers and dams were highly polluted they had lost the ability to dilute effluents.

Poor water quality was threatening economic growth, Turton was also reported to have planned to say his presentation. Turton was also to have said the government needed to accept that the development targets of the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for SA were simply unobtainable, or a radical rethink of how to mobilise the country's science, engineering and technological capacity was needed.

"If we accept the former option, we can say social instability will grow and SA will slide into anarchy.. .the xenophobic violence is a taste of things to come if we follow this trajectory...do we wish to avert the water crisis now before it happens or are we to be content with the status quo, happy to deal with it after it has been thrust upon us like the electricity crisis was?," Turton was quoted in the Saturday Star as saying. Van der Merwe said an internal investigation into the matter has started.

Sunday, 23 November 2008

A party to send off two Durban families emigrating to escape crime in South Africa turned sour when 20 people were robbed at gunpoint by robbers posing as car guards.

As news of the La Lucia Ridge robbery spread yesterday, residents vowed to defy municipal by-laws and erect boom gates. "People could have been shot. We were just lucky," said Nick Gahagan, owner of the house where the robbery took place on Friday night.

At least 40 South African homes are invaded by armed robbers every day, according to police statistics. Analysts fear an increase in the incidence of such crime during the Christmas holidays. The Durban North community policing forum has asked residents to be more cautious because of the perception that there is a lot of money "lying around" during this time.

Ironically, the party had been thrown to bid farewell to a businessman who is emigrating to New York to expand his business "away from the crime", and another guest, who is also fed up with crime in South Africa and is packing his bags for Australia.

Guests also condemned the police's late response, saying that whereas a private security company arrived within 15 minutes, the police took an hour and a half.

WASHINGTON – Just when liberals thought it was safe to start identifying themselves as such, an acclaimed, veteran psychiatrist is making the case that the ideology motivating them is actually a mental disorder.

"Based on strikingly irrational beliefs and emotions, modern liberals relentlessly undermine the most important principles on which our freedoms were founded," says Dr. Lyle Rossiter, author of the new book, "The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness." "Like spoiled, angry children, they rebel against the normal responsibilities of adulthood and demand that a parental government meet their needs from cradle to grave."

While political activists on the other side of the spectrum have made similar observations, Rossiter boasts professional credentials and a life virtually free of activism and links to "the vast right-wing conspiracy." For more than 35 years he has diagnosed and treated more than 1,500 patients as a board-certified clinical psychiatrist and examined more than 2,700 civil and criminal cases as a board-certified forensic psychiatrist. He received his medical and psychiatric training at the University of Chicago. Rossiter says the kind of liberalism being displayed by both Barack Obama and his Democratic primary opponent Hillary Clinton can only be understood as a psychological disorder.

"A social scientist who understands human nature will not dismiss the vital roles of free choice, voluntary cooperation and moral integrity – as liberals do," he says. "A political leader who understands human nature will not ignore individual differences in talent, drive, personal appeal and work ethic, and then try to impose economic and social equality on the population – as liberals do. And a legislator who understands human nature will not create an environment of rules which over-regulates and over-taxes the nation's citizens, corrupts their character and reduces them to wards of the state – as liberals do." Dr. Rossiter says the liberal agenda preys on weakness and feelings of inferiority in the population by:

rejecting the sovereignty of the individual, subordinating him to the will of the government.

"The roots of liberalism – and its associated madness – can be clearly identified by understanding how children develop from infancy to adulthood and how distorted development produces the irrational beliefs of the liberal mind," he says. "When the modern liberal mind whines about imaginary victims, rages against imaginary villains and seeks above all else to run the lives of persons competent to run their own lives, the neurosis of the liberal mind becomes painfully obvious."

Over the past 19 years Sue Seeber from Steynsburg, Eastern Cape, has lost almost two dozen friends and family members to crime. Here she speaks about the rights of the victim, police incompetence and her personal crusade to make a difference and find solutions to turn the tide of crime in SA.

How have you been affected by crime in South Africa?

It started in 1987 when my nephew Gysie Labuschagne was murdered in Cape Town. Years later my husband’s cousin Terry Tarr was robbed and shot on a farm near Grahamstown. Then Regina Venter, my aunt’s mother-in-law, was raped and strangled with a telephone cord in Dordrecht, followed by the slaying of Regina’s daughter near Burgersdorp. My husband’s cousin Victor Seeber was murdered in Kwazulu Natal. His burnt body was found in his bakkie (pick-up) along the road. I also lost two distant family members from the Rossouw family in Dordrecht in a shooting between Queenstown and Dordrecht. The new millennium saw the shooting of my son Edwin Seeber in Johannesburg and in 2003 my brother Jan Labuschagne was stabbed in the stomach in Indwe – he later died from medical complications due to this incident. In 2005 my distant cousin Roan Gouws was shot in Port Elizabeth and recently my brother Johan “Sokkies” Labuschagne was shot on his farm near Indwe. Another 10 friends and acquaintances have fallen victim to crime in this country. It’s terrible.

Do you believe that your brother’s murder could have been averted?My brother’s death was a result of police incompetence. His life was twice threatened by the same individual (now standing trial for the murder). He reported it twice and made two statements at the Indwe police station and one and Aliwal North. The police knew the individual was harassing him before the murder. My brother often said his life was in danger. The police maintain it was robbery, but my brother’s murder was premeditated.

You have become very vocal in the press. Why?The press is now our only weapon. Maybe somebody will take notice. As an individual, I want to do everything in my power to change the current situation in this country. I want to be heard wherever I can. We have plans to involve the Portuguese and German press. I want the situation in SA to be known by the world. Murders take place and we just move on as if it is normal. I’m now in contact with the Freedom Front, the Democratic Alliance and certain individuals overseas to publicise crime in SA. I feel the only way forward is to get international support because we don’t seem to be getting help from the state here.

What do you think are the causes of the wave of crime in this country?There are a number of reasons in my opinion. Firstly, there is no rule of law and no justice. Criminals commit crimes and are out on bail within days or weeks. I thought it was a good thing when the law was reformulated with an emphasis on human rights. Now I know it was the beginning of a bad thing. Criminals are clever; they know they can literally get away with murder on the back of human rights. Secondly, I think the disbanding of the commandos has left a security vacuum in the rural areas. Crime pays nowadays, literally. Apparently, for a fee, somebody will kill anybody on your behalf. These crimes are more organised than we think.

What should be done to turn the tide of crime in South Africa?Firstly, if the police can’t protect us then we should allow freelance security companies to protect us. This is what I am after. If they (South African Police Services) can’t do the job then somebody else must. Secondly, individuals should be given more scope to protect themselves with their own firearms. We find ourselves, thanks to firearm legislation, in a situation where when we are threatened, we can’t use our weapons and if we do, we become the criminal in the scenario. To have a licensed firearm nowadays is useless while criminals brazenly walk around with stolen weapons. The law is against us law-abiding citizens and in favour of criminals.

Do you believe the death sentence should be reinstated?I’m in favour of the death penalty. I feel if someone takes a life, his or hers should be taken in return. Just as the Bible says, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

Some people believe that farm murders are not only linked to crime but are an attempt to remove white farmers from the land. What do you believe?As far as farm murders are concerned history repeats itself. In certain areas is true. They want to remove farmers from the land or at least use it as an excuse to kill them. Revenge against white farmers in some areas is real. In a recent court case a farm murderer admitted that he killed the farmer because he was on “his” land.

Do you feel your grandchildren have a future in this country?No. My grandchildren are all overseas. I support their decision. I don’t want them to end up where so many of my friends and family have. If I was young enough, I would leave too. I have had enough.

“Barack Obama has decided to revive a plot the Saudi Crown Prince hatched in 2002. Abdullah bin Abdulaziz had suggested Israel beat a retreat to the pre-1967 borders, in return for the recognition, whatever that means, of the Arab world.” …

“For its concessions, the Arab League will doff a collective kafia to Israel. As will Israel be given ‘an effective veto’ on the national suicide pact known as the right of return—the imperative to absorb millions of self-styled Palestinian ‘refugees’ into Israel proper. …”

“There is nothing Solomonic about splitting up Jerusalem, which was sacred to Jews for nearly two thousand years before Muhammad, and is not once mentioned in the Koran. Did Gaza not set a sufficiently strong precedent against such folly? It was “returned” to the Palestinians, who promptly destroyed the hothouses Israelis had built there, and planted Qassam rocket launchers in the ground instead. Gaza now hothouses Hamasniks.”

“(On the general wisdom of handing over territory—any territory—to voracious, vicious majorities, consider South Africa and its capital, Pretoria. Renamed Tshwane, Pretoria is now occupied by Saint Nelson Mandela’s syndicate, the African National Congress. The difference is that more people worry about the Holy City going to hell in a hand cart than care about the decay of Pretoria.)”

Update: The Sunday Times is a British newspaper. The item about Obama agitating for Israel’s return to the 1967 borders originated in the Times. Has this been reported in the US press? Recall, the first time we learned about George Hussein Onyango Obama, the president elect’s half-starving, half-brother, was from the British press. Is this the case with resepct to Obama’s direction with Israel? If the American press intends to abrogate its responsibility to report about this man, much as the same media neglected to report the truth about the invasion of Iraq—scouring the foreign news media will become a must.

On the topic of minimizing iffy news about the media’s Messiah; did you know Malia and what’shername—Obama’s other precious progeny—will be attending a private school at the cost of 30 grand a pop, per year. “Mayor Adrian M. Fenty of Washington strongly lobbied the Obamas to consider a public school, but that was apparently never an option,” reports the NYT. A man of the people is our Prince. What’s good for average Joe’s goose is clearly no good for Obama’s gander.

Wednesday, 19 November 2008

This SA Sucks post goes back to 3 November 2008. What happened since then, I hear you ask. Nothing…!

Badplaas - Badplaas police have asked the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) for help after accusing an ANC councillor and member of the Young Communist League (YCL) of inciting their members to “shoot to kill” police officers.

The threat was reportedly made at a Young Communist League (YCL) meeting in Badplaas on October 18 where a memorandum protesting against alleged racism at the Badplaas police station was handed over to station management.

Badplaas police commissioner Charles Marivate said the police had been compelled to ask the SAHRC for protection after YCL secretary Sibusiso Radebe and ANC councillor in the Albert Luthuli local municipality Pro Khoza had explicitly threatened local officers with physical harm.

“I myself was threatened that if I supported my white officers, I would be out of the window. The threats against the other officers were worse,” said Marivate.

‘Whites days are numbered’

Two of those targeted by the YCL are deputy inspector Jacobus Vermeulen and Inspector Lucas van Rooyen, who were singled out by name at a large public meeting and told that there “days are numbered”.

“During the gathering, the secretary of the YCL started to swear at the station commissioner and other police members, accusing us of not doing our jobs. In front of everyone present, he pointed fingers at Vermeulen and myself, saying our days were numbered because we are racists,” said Van Rooyen.

Van Rooyen added that Radebe and Khoza also told the community that white policemen “gaan kak” (will shit) and that “julle broeke gaan vol kak wees” (your pants will be full of shit).

“This incitement needs to be investigated and be stopped. Khoza has only a handful of followers and is disrupting the community’s peaceful existence. He also incites attacks on other members of the community,” Van Rooyen said.

The two officers’ black colleagues agree, with 23 policemen from the Badplaas station signing a petition to the SAHRC asking for an urgent investigation and possible charges against Radebe and Khoza.

The office of acting Mpumalanga police commissioner Rex Machabi has also been asked to do a full scale investigation into the matter.

Radebe said the police officers were welcome to complain to the SAHRC.

“These guys are really racist,” he said. “We did not say the [ANC Youth League President Julius] Malema thing [shoot to kill]. We only said that we were prepared to lay down our lives for the pre-dominantly farm worker community in Badplaas because they are ill-treated and the police are failing to investigate their cases,” he explained.

Radebe said that if white residents of Badplaas did not stop being racist and ill-treating farm workers, “daar gaan kak wees” (there will be shit).

Khoza, denied all the accusations made by the police, but agreed with Radebe that there were racist attitudes towards farm workers in Badplaas.

“There is more going on in Badplaas than what the police are telling you. Someday the truth will come out. I did not say any inciting statements against them, but I would like to appeal for them to take cases of our people seriously,” said Khoza.

The YCL memorandum complains that cases reported by black people against whites were not taken seriously and not investigated properly. They also accuse the station commissioner of calling Khoza stupid.

The YCL demands that all racism related cases be investigated by provincial instead of local police to prevent bias.

He said his officers took all reported cases seriously.

“We take all cases reported to us seriously. And, yes, we do get cases of suspected racism reported by farm workers, but our people should understand that we work with evidence and not speculation. If there is no evidence then there is no case,” Commissioner Marivate explained. He said he would not be threatened by anyone who tried to tell him how to treat his staff.

“I was not appointed at the police station by the community members, but by the provincial commissioner. He is the only one who can remove me,” he said.

Spokesperson for the provincial police commissioner’s office, Superintendent Sibongile Nkosi, said a case of intimidation against Radebe and Khoza is being investigated.

“We are taking these threats seriously and we will investigate this matter to the end. Members of the public should know that there are proper channels that should be followed when they have complaints against the police, it is not right to make intimidating statements like “shoot to kill”,” said Nkosi.

Legal officer at the SAHRC in Mpumalanga, Bafana Ngwenya, said they have not yet seen the complaint.

“We think that the complaint might have been sent to our head office in Johannesburg, and we will investigate and respond to it as soon as head office refers it to us,” said Ngwenya.

White (Caucasian) people are often called racists. When you expose, say or do anything to a person of another race, you are called a racist. This is especially true when you speak / or expose the truth. As you are aware, there are enormous double standards at work here; e.g. when blacks do or say the same things- they are not racists.

When white people are called “racists”, they often try to proof that they are not “racists”. Unfortunately, this is impossible, because you will always be called a racists by these Anti-European / Anti-White race haters. It does not matter what you do. You can even mate with these Caucasian race haters; you will still be called “racist”.

The term “racist” is in actual fact Anti-European / Anti-White HATE SPEECH.

The term “racists” is always used when people of the white race is insulted.

These Anti-European / Anti-White / Anti-Caucasian race haters, does not like it when they are exposed / or when you expose the truth. They hate the truth, and the word “racist” is their only weapon. They think you are going to Shut-Up or go away when they call you a “racist”.

Blacks claim they can never be racist. Therefore the term “racist” is only reserved to insult white (Caucasian) people. This is fundamental proof of the HATE involved in this ugly word.

Sunday, 16 November 2008

Use your voice to turn SA in the right direction, writes TSHEPO DIALE of Ga-Rankuwa.

Reviewing the state of the nation I am afraid that I tend towards a rather pessimistic view.

Unless there are some fundamental attitudinal changes by all role players, there is a risk that we will see an increasingly polarised society based on heightened racial divisions – and I am not just talking black and white.

The causes will be widespread but will probably include wealth disparities, growing poverty, affirmative action and poor service delivery. Add to this the likely increasing loss of desperately needed skills as young professionals seek their fortunes in more stable societies and declining education standards on the back of ideological experimentation, increased crime on the back of poor policing, growing poverty, uncontrolled urbanisation and large numbers of Aids orphans.

Poor immigration controls will see Africa’s desperate masses heading here and this will speed up the infrastructural decay. Political meddling in sport will increase racial disharmony and reduce the likelihood of reconciliation. This will cause investors to give us a wide berth with devastating implications.

What can we do? We can assess where we stand and then decide what we can do. But we cannot ignore it and abdicate our responsibility.

An essential element is making sure government leaders do the right thing for all South Africans, irrespective of race. Use your voice and make sure your reasonable opinions are heard.

Hmm, life in the New! Improved! South Africa!™ is so much better huh? Read the glowing results below after 15 years of 'freedom'.

It's a good thing we got rid of that despicable yet highly efficient apartheid system where schools, hospitals, public services, government and infrastructure functioned properly and jobs were plentiful.

Hey, like they say, better freedom - in poverty and in illness - living till the age of 49 than a life under apartheid, employed and living healthily to a ripe old age.

Life expectancy lower than a country engaged in a brutal war. I despair.

Thursday, 13 November 2008

Tuesday, 11 November 2008

JOHANNESBURG — The government of Zimbabwe, led by President Robert Mugabe, spent $7.3 million donated by an international organization to fight killer diseases on other things and has failed to honour requests to return the money, according to the organization’s inspector general.

The actions by Zimbabwe have deprived the organization, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, of resources it needs and damaged efforts to expand life-saving treatment, said the inspector general, John Parsons.

Zimbabwe’s actions also jeopardize a more ambitious $188 million Global Fund grant to Zimbabwe, due for consideration by the fund’s board on Friday, Mr. Parsons said.

The Global Fund has continued to demand that Zimbabwe return the money, and Global Fund officials say Zimbabwean financial officials have promised to do so by Thursday. But Mr. Parsons said Zimbabwean officials also said they had not repaid the money because they did not have enough foreign currency.

The breakdown of trust between the Global Fund and Zimbabwe’s government comes at a time of widening humanitarian crisis and casts further doubt on the willingness of Western donors to invest heavily in rebuilding the economically broken nation as long as Mr. Mugabe is in charge, even if a deadlock over a power-sharing government is resolved.

Mr. Parsons said in an interview on Sunday that last year the Global Fund deposited $12.3 million in foreign currency into Zimbabwe’s Reserve Bank. He declined to speculate on how the $7.3 million it was seeking to be returned had been spent, except to say it was not on the intended purpose. Civic groups and opposition officials maintain that the Reserve Bank helps finance Mr. Mugabe’s patronage machine.

Mr. Parsons did offer an example of the human consequences of the Reserve Bank’s failure to hand over the money for disease fighting. The Global Fund has brought in large quantities of medicines that can cure malaria but has been able to finance the training of only 495 people to distribute them safely instead of the planned 27,000. There were 2.7 million cases of malaria among Zimbabwe’s 12 million people in the World Health Organization’s most recent estimates.

“The drugs expire by the middle of next year, and it would be criminal if we can’t use them because of these problems,” Mr. Parsons said. “They’ve got quite a short shelf life.”

Zimbabwe’s information minister, Sikhanyiso Ndlovu, said Sunday in an interview that he was not aware of the particulars of the disagreement, but he defended what he described as the Reserve Bank’s good intentions and accused the Global Fund of politicizing aid.

“They always want to put certain standards and concoct certain things to make us look bad and horrendous in international eyes,” he said. Gideon Gono, governor of the Reserve Bank, the custodian of the Global Fund’s money, has been spending large sums this year on a variety of things, according to reports in Zimbabwe’s state-owned media.

Mr. Gono gave the country’s judges new vehicles, satellite dishes and televisions and allocated 79 vehicles for the Information Ministry. He announced the provision of 3,000 tractors, 105 combine harvesters and 100,000 plows for the country’s farm mechanization program. Mr. Ndlovu, the information minister, said the Reserve Bank had been getting foreign currency for imports of food and medicine.

Mr. Ndlovu said the Global Fund had sided with Western nations that had restricted aid to Zimbabwe and imposed sanctions on it — sanctions that Mr. Mugabe and his party blame for the country’s economic ruin. “The money from the Global Fund is nowhere near what the Reserve Bank has spent on health care for the country,” the information minister said.

Civic groups and opposition officials contend that Mr. Gono and the Reserve Bank have helped finance the governing party’s patronage operation, essential to Mr. Mugabe’s hold on power for the past 28 years. Eddie Cross, a senior official in the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, accused the Reserve Bank of looting the Global Fund’s donation. International aid groups and United Nations agencies say the country’s annual inflation rate of more than 230 million percent and rules imposed by the Reserve Bank have severely complicated the logistics of helping the most impoverished people.

The Reserve Bank suspended electronic banking a month ago, making it impossible for international organizations to pay for goods and services with bank transfers. The Reserve Bank has also severely limited cash withdrawals from commercial banks. And the inflation rate has rendered check payments nearly worthless by the time they clear days later.

Stockholm - An Anglican bishop from Zimbabwe on Monday expressed grave concern over the situation in his country, sentiments that were echoed by a Swedish cabinet minister.

"It is like a war, in the sense that there is total absence of peace," Bishop Sebastian Bakare told Swedish radio news. Bakare was in Sweden to accept the Per Anger Prize, a human rights prize for his efforts at fighting oppression.

The prize, worth 150 000 kronor, was created in 2004 in honour of Swedish diplomat Per Anger and honours "people and organizations that risk their own safety to defend the rights of the individual against oppression and inhumanity".

Anger was a close associate of Raoul Wallenberg, who was credited with saving thousands of Hungarian Jews during World War II. "People are crying, no food, no water, no medication," Bakare earlier told broadcaster TV4.

"Some are displaced, children are not going to school. I think every aspect of our society you look at is crying." Bakare expressed doubts about the call for power-sharing of the home affairs ministry between Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and his arch-rival, prime minister-designate Morgan Tsvangirai.

A summit of Southern African leaders called for this on Sunday, but Tsvangirai questioned the viability of sharing the key ministry. The bishop said he had "never had any trust in any compromise in government. You either win or you lose.

The elections in March were decisive enough, that is what the people wished." "People need to have a strong government to put the economic situation in a better position, not this wishy-washy kind of argument," he added, saying that he was optimistic that "one day Zimbabwe is going to be free.

"International Development Cooperation Minister Gunilla Carlsson said she was "disappointed" that the emergency summit of the 15-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC) had failed to break the deadlock between Mugabe and Tsvangirai.

"While the negotiations drag on, the people of Zimbabwe are paying a high price," Carlsson added in a statement.

And the bloodshed continues while the South African taxpayer wines and dines Mugabe and his cronies, at yet another bullshit summit. South African President Kgalema Motlanthe, who chaired the summit, said an agreement on power-sharing "remains the only vehicle to help extricate Zimbabwe from her socio-economic challenges".

Zimbabwe is suffering from severe food shortages and rampant inflation. Mr Tsvangirai has warned that a million Zimbabweans could starve to death in a year if the political deadlock continues.

Tomaz Salomao, executive secretary of the SADC, said the compromise would mean there would have to be two home ministers, "one appointed by Zanu-PF, one by the MDC".

Mr Salomao told reporters that "the SADC was asked to rule and SADC took a decision and that's the position of SADC".

We should not for one moment forget that it was our current president Kgalema Motlanthe who, as head of the South African observer mission to the massively rigged Zimbabwean elections in 2002, declared that poll “free, fair and credible”.

It is therefore a given that his credibility as a mediator will be one sided. He and Thabo Mbeki have pulled out all the stops in their unwavering support for this dictator, while the bodies pile up.

Friday, 7 November 2008

With these words a black police inspector from Tembisa on the East Rand allegedly scolded the victims of an armed robbery and hijacking attempt in Kempton Park on Monday night.

This officer, whose name is known to Beeld, apparently refused to arrest a black suspect on the scene.

He also refused to open a case after Nic Lubbe, 51, from Kempton Park West, his daughter, Antoenet Cronjé, and her two sons, Morné, 11, and Kyle, 3, were assailed by robbers on Monday night.

'White dogs'He ostensibly also refused to allow white members of the Norkem Park police to search the suspects' car and called them "white dogs".

Lubbe said he was on his way to drop off his daughter and grandchildren at their house in Terrenure at about 23:00 when he saw a grey Corsa bakkie (pickup) next to the road in Orange River Street.

Suddenly the Corsa bakkie's (pickup) headlights went on to blind Lubbe. Then it was driven into Lubbe's bakkie from behind.

Three armed men jumped off the back and grabbed Cronjé's handbag. Lubbe sped away and later returned to the scene with his wife, Mara, 49, and members of the Norkem Park police office.

A black inspector from the Tembisa roadblock task team was already there with one of the suspects (the driver of the Corsa). The other three got away.

"The inspector said we were white dogs and he told a white policewoman that he would see to it that she was shot dead in a robbery. "Then he cocked his R5 (rifle) in my face and said it was time that we whites packed our bags and f-cked off out of the country."

An eyewitness apparently heard the inspector's offensive remarks. "I saw how these people were robbed, but he protected the criminal."

The inspector apparently did open an accident report. The Corsa driver's wife then arrived on the scene, posing as a police officer.

One of the Norkem Park police officers said this woman wanted to arrest them when they tried to search the Corsa for "interfering with the scene".

Lubbe said the woman emptied out the contents of his daughter's handbag and returned the empty handbag to her.

On Tuesday Lubbe opened a case of armed robbery and attempted hijacking at the Norkem Park police.

Gauteng police spokesperson Superintendent Eugene Opperman said the matter was being investigated "with the view to possible disciplinary steps."

The Tembisa and provincial police management have expressed their shock at the alleged incident, he said.

Wednesday, 5 November 2008

So the answer to my question turned out to be yes, America really was going to do this. A historic moment indeed. The hyperbole for once is not exaggerated: this is a watershed election which changes the fate of the world. The fear however is that the world now becomes very much less safe for all of us as a result. Those of us who have looked on appalled during this most frightening of presidential elections – at the suspension of reason and its replacement by thuggery -- can only hope that the way this man governs will be very different from the profile provided by his influences, associations and record to date. It’s a faint hope – the enemies of America, freedom and the west will certainly be rejoicing today.

America has voted for change, apparently. Change from what, precisely? From Bush? But in the second term, Bush stopped being Bush. His foreign policy lurched from paralysis to appeasement (redeemed only by the strategic genius of Gen Petraeus – and what price Petraeus now?) As Frank Gaffney wrote in the Washington Times yesterday, Bush’s Treasury is about to open the way for sharia law to be imposed upon America’s banking system. And it was a Democrat-controlled Congress that helped provoke the sub-prime lending crisis that triggered the current financial meltdown.

What this election tells us is that America voted for change because America is in the process of changing – not just demographically by becoming less white and more diverse, but as the result of a culture war in which western civilisation is losing out to a far-left agenda which has become mainstream, teaching American children to despise the founding values of their country and hijacking discourse by the minority power-grab of victim-culture.

The reaction of conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic to this undoubted change – not just in the US but in Britain too – shows the intellectual disarray caused by these profound developments. They say politicians must stop trying to hold the cultural line and go instead with the flow of change. In Britain, the Tory party has adopted this strategy. Now there are Republicans saying the same thing.

But John McCain is a Republican who does not fit the old template, who does subscribe to some of this ‘change’ agenda on a number of issues. As a result, he was incapable of attacking Obama on the most important grounds of all: that he stood for values inimical to America’s founding principles. When he did venture into this territory, it was half-cocked and far too late, appearing merely like the desperate throw of a loser. The reason he couldn’t do it earlier was that he had no coherent platform of his own. So why vote for a muddled and erratic quasi-'progressive' when the real thing is a rock star? It cannot be said too emphatically -- the Republicans lost this election. Obama ran a superbly disciplined campaign and he was an impressive candidate, particularly in his calm and stately demeanour throughout. The Republicans screwed up in government, they selected a hopelessly frail and erratic candidate, he ran a shambolic campaign. They deserved to lose.

So now we are promised a change in America’s fundamental values. And they really will be changed. Obama has said in terms that he thinks the US constitution is flawed. America’s belief in itself as defending individual liberty, truth and justice on behalf of the free world will now be expiated instead as its original sin. Those who have for the past eight years worked to bring down the America that defends and protects life and liberty are today ecstatic. They have stormed the very citadel on Pennsylvania Avenue itself.

Millions of Americans remain lion-hearted, decent, rational and sturdy. They find themselves today abandoned, horrified, deeply apprehensive for the future of their country and the free world. No longer the land of the free and the home of the brave; they must now look elsewhere

The contrast between, on the one hand, the huge amount of material about Obama’s radical associations that has been published in on-line journals and in a few brave newspapers, and on the other the refusal by big media to address it and to vilify those who do, becomes more astounding by the day. The Obamaniacs are spinning the relationship between Obama and William Ayers, former of Weather Undergound Terrorism Inc, as of no consequence because this was supposedly a chance acquaintance and because the educational project they worked on, the Annenberg Challenge, was a worthy one.

Stanley Kurtz now nails that canard by showing how, through the Annenberg Challenge, Obama and Ayers channelled funds to extremist anti-American Afrocentric ‘educational’ programmes which were a carbon-copy of the world view of Pastor Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s black racist mentor who, under pressure, Obama was forced to repudiate. These programmes promoted, amongst other radical ideas, the ‘rites of passage’ philosophy which attempted to create a ‘virtually separate and intensely anti-American black social world’ in order to ‘counter the potentially detrimental effects of a Eurocentrically oriented society.’ One such teacher taught that

‘The submission to Western civilization and its most outstanding offspring, American civilization, is, in reality, surrender to white supremacy.’

Kurtz concludes:

However he may seek to deny it, all evidence points to the fact that, from his position as board chair of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Barack Obama knowingly and persistently funded an educational project that shared the extremist and anti-American philosophy of Jeremiah Wright.

No surprise there, since back in June Kurtz pointed to evidence that Obama shared the black racism of the Trinity United Church of Christ. In this article Obama was reported as rejecting ‘integrationist assimilation’ and wanting to channel black rage more effectively into political organisation. Kurtz dug out a chapter in a 1990 book called After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois in which Obama sketched out how radical black churches could be harnessed to help radicalise the black population. As Kurtz wrote:

So it would appear that Obama’s own writings solve the mystery of why he stayed at Trinity for 20 years. Obama’s long-held and decidedly audacious hope has been to spread Wright’s radical spirit by linking it to a viable, left-leaning political program, with Obama himself at the center. The revolutionizing power of a politically awakened black church is not some side issue, or merely a personal matter, but has been the signature theme of Obama’s grand political strategy.

Those few brave souls who do try to enlighten the public about all this come up against the kind of intimidation by Camp Obama charted here by Michael Barone:

Stanley Kurtz appeared on Milt Rosenberg's WGN radio program in Chicago. Mr. Kurtz had been researching Mr. Obama's relationship with unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers in Chicago Annenberg Challenge papers in the Richard J. Daley Library in Chicago - papers that were closed off to him for some days, apparently at the behest of Obama supporters. Obama fans jammed WGN's phone lines and sent in hundreds of protest e-mails. The message was clear to anyone who would follow Mr. Rosenberg's example. We will make trouble for you if you let anyone make the case against The One.

Other Obama supporters have threatened critics with criminal prosecution. In September, St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch and St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce warned citizens that they would bring criminal libel prosecutions against anyone who made statements against Mr. Obama that were ‘false.’ I had been under the impression that the Alien and Sedition Acts had gone out of existence in 1801-'02. Not so, apparently, in metropolitan St. Louis. Similarly, the Obama campaign called for a criminal investigation of the American Issues Project when it ran ads highlighting Mr. Obama's ties to Mr. Ayers.

No such threats, of course, will be made against this new book whose publication is tactfully timed for next year so as not to frighten the horses -- Race Course Against White Supremacy, by none other than William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

Meanwhile, it turns out that not only did Obama do favours for convicted Chicago fraudster Tony Rezko, but as this story reports Alexi Giannoulias, who reputedly bankrolled Michael ‘Jaws’ Giorango, a Chicagoan twice convicted of bookmaking and promoting prostitution, became Illinois state treasurer last year after Obama vouched for him, and has now has pledged to raise $100,000 for Obama’s campaign.

You have to pinch yourself – a Marxisant radical who all his life has been mentored by, sat at the feet of, worshipped with, befriended, endorsed the philosophy of, funded and been in turn funded, politically promoted and supported by a nexus comprising black power anti-white racists, Jew-haters, revolutionary Marxists, unrepentant former terrorists and Chicago mobsters, is on the verge of becoming President of the United States. And apparently it’s considered impolite to say so.